Latest

Latest News

10 January 2019

Agency Print Head Points To Resurgence Of Newsbrands

News brands have cause for optimism as consumer appetite to pay for quality journalism continues to grow, and context and quality become increasingly important to advertisers, an agency print head has said.

Writing for Campaign, Wavemaker UK head of print brands and partner engagement Emma Dibben said that newsbrands had delivered the “critical evidence required for potential success” through the launch of PAMCo and Newsworks’ studies, including ‘Planning for profit’ and ‘The value of quality’ with Group M.

She said: “Clarity in a chaotic world will be required more than ever this year. Clarity is what news brands will bring to political and economic uncertainty, along with increased engagement. Predicting the commercial trajectory is tough for all but there is a very solid foundation for news brands to work on.

“Last year featured some decisive moments in delivering the critical evidence required for potential success: the launch of audience measurement platform PAMCo and several Newsworks’ studies, including "Planning for profit" and "The value of quality research", with Group M.

“News brands have established that they are synonymous with high-quality and viewable inventory at scale. The groundwork and collaboration of the past two years is in place, and this year the stakeholders will continue to realise the opportunity.

“Genuine collaboration is now in place in the form of The Ozone Project, reaching more than 42 million adults across News UK, The Guardian, Reach and the Telegraph.

"While limited to digital display at the time of writing, Ozone will bring new formats and partners on board this year. There is great opportunity here. The initial outcome is likely to be yield-improvement for publishers, rather than exponential growth in digital. Common audience profiles across the market will bring consistency to data at scale and will be immensely valuable to clients.

"Further collaboration is already well under way with PAMCo, which combines online and print audience data. This joint industry currency will create further inroads given that PAMCo data is recently available via TGI, which will drive its use in the planning communities.

"Context will become increasingly important to clients as well as quality. The agency role will be to encourage clients in devising more nuanced keyword strategies in programmatic. Too much quality and viewable inventory is passed over, and we need to work harder to overcome this while we wait for better tech to enhance contextual buying.

"The consumer appetite to pay for quality journalism continues to grow, and campaigning journalism held powerful organisations and individuals to account yet again in 2018.

"It was a resurgent year for news brands and, despite the economic challenges, there is much to be optimistic about in 2019."

The NMA uses cookies on its website. These are necessary for the website to function. We don’t use any cookies for the purposes of marketing, or pass on any information to third parties. Cookie information is available on the Privacy and Cookies page, where you will also find our Privacy Policy.